The present invention relates generally to the sale of foreign currency, and more specifically to a dispenser or packet which facilitates the sale of prepackaged amounts of currency to tourists and others planning to visit a foreign country.
At the present time, one who is planning to travel to a foreign country as a tourist or business traveler typically makes arrangements for travel and hotel arrangements through a travel agent. The traveler must then go to a foreign currency dealer or bank dealing in foreign currencies to purchase a quantity of currency of the countries in which he or she intends to travel. The purchaser requests conversion from the local currency to the desired currency. The cashier/seller must determine how much of the desired currency to provide based upon existent exchange rates and the amount the purchaser wants to spend. Additionally, when the currencies being held by the seller are held in trust, the seller must determine how much to remit to the wholesaler or bank, with the difference being the agent's commission. Since each purchaser may elect to spend differing amounts and since exchange rates change constantly, an indeterminate number of currency notes are involved in every transaction.
Additionally, because the desired currencies are sold individually against constantly changing exchange rates and depending upon how much the purchaser wishes to spend, each transaction must be calculated separately for both the selling price to the purchaser and the remitted price to the wholesaler. This has required a cashier environment limiting the number of selling locations requiring on-the-spot delivery of the foreign currencies purchased. It also has required that large stocks of loose notes be carried thus presenting security and inventory problems.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a means for expediting and improving the sale, distribution, delivery, security, and inventory of foreign currency.
It is a further object of the invention to permit the traveler to purchase a desired amount of currency at the same location at which he or she makes other travel arrangements or at the airline ticket terminal prior to departure.
It is another object of the invention to allow travel agents, airlines, and others to sell foreign currency without the need for computing the cost and commission of the purchased currency in a manner that substantially eliminates computational error and which provides the traveler with up-to-date rates of exchange.
To these ends, the present invention provides a novel foreign currency dispenser or packet and a method for its use in which a predetermined amount of foreign currency, five pounds Sterling or 100 French francs, for example, is packaged. The dispenser or packet is encoded along an edge in a machine-readable code. The code identifies the amount and type (nation) of the currency that is prepackaged in the envelope as well as the identification of the currency retailer.
At the time the traveler makes a purchase of the foreign currency packet of the invention, the packet is placed in a code reader which reads the code on the packet. This information is transmitted to a central processor located at a currency wholesaler, which typically may be a bank, at which the current exchange rates are stored and updated. The processor performs the necessary computations to calculate the cost of the packet contents to the purchaser as well as the amount to be remitted to the wholesaler. The processor then transmits that data back to the retailer where this information is displayed and/or printed. The processor has the capacity to store information concerning the foreign currency transactions for a plurality of such retailers each of which is identified by a retailer identification code and carried on the currency packets sold at the retailer's location. The processor also has the capacity to total daily transactions for each retailer by sales and remittance amount thus simplifying daily reconciliations. It also has the capability to track packet inventory to ascertain stock and resupply requirements.